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Archive for February, 2017

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” the comic-strip character Pogo by Walt Kelly, 1970
The same may be true of the economy. So says Tyler Cowen, author of the new book “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.”
Although we’ve recovered from the Great Recession, there are widespread fears that the economy will stagnate or grow only slowly. Government won’t be able to handle the next crisis, whether a war, financial meltdown or pandemic.
Maybe, says Cowen, an economist at George Mason University. But he doesn’t blame the usual suspects: debt hangover from the…

UK firms manage approximately L1 trillion in assets for European investors outside of the UK. With the Brexit negotiations slated to start this month, the UK Investment Association has raised serious questions about whether those assets could be taken away from UK asset managers especially given Prime Minister Mays prioritization of immigration limits over capital markets.
However, even if the UK does not obtain preferential access to the EUs capital markets in the Brexit negotiations, UK firms can continue to manage assets for EU clients, just like other non-EU firms including…

Manufacturing is a signature part of the Trump presidential brand and will define much of his success.
But is his gamble on manufacturing worth it? Skeptics insist that manufacturing is in irreversible decline. Thats not what we see each year when the National Association of Manufacturers travels the country on our State of Manufacturing Tour. We are alive and prospering.
To the contrary, the manufacturing story is one of advancement and transformation. From self-driving cars to 3-D printing, the future is being made right here in America.
Our country is benefitting from its place as the…

<p>Federal Reserve rate hikes and President Donald Trump's tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks could help JPMorgan Chase , the largest U.S. bank, increase profit by more than 20% in the next few years, reinforcing a positive outlook for the financial industry that has driven up bank stocks by 56% over the past 12 months. </p>

(Bloomberg) — For the first time in his 37 years working at New Jersey car dealerships, Larry Kull had to rent extra space to store unsold new Honda vehicles — one of the latest signs that the record U.S. auto market is cooling.

T.S. Eliot tells us that April is the cruelest month.Â A great poet he was, but a trader he was not.Â Caesar was warned about the Ides of March, and investors may find the caution to be particular apropos now.Â Â Consider the congestion of events around March 15.Â Â A few days before, March 9 is ECB meeting.Â Although no policy change is likely, the press conference often elicits a market response.Â Headline inflation is moving toward the target, though core inflation remains stable and just a little above the 0.6% trough.Â Still, the risks of deflation have all but disappeared, while…

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, gained 447 billion kroner ($53 billion) last year after stocks rallied following the election of Donald Trump and as the investor plowed deeper into emerging and frontier markets.

I needed cashI spent most of every day thinking about liquidity, talking about liquidity, looking to the heavens and pleading for liquidity. My kingdom for liquidity. Those are the words of Phil Knight, the brilliant, visionary, billionaire founder of Nike, from his endlessly interesting 2016 memoir, Shoe Dog.
Knight was recalling a frequent yearning that defined 1970 for him. At the time this importer of Tiger shoes meant to fulfill the needs of an eccentric and small U.S. market interested in jogging wasnt viewed as brilliant or visionary, and if he had a net worth,…